The Nielsen poll last month again put Turnbull ahead of
Tony Abbott
as preferred leader, 58 per cent to 35 per cent.

But to paraphrase a recent episode of Modern Family: You don’t really love Turnbull; you love the idea of Turnbull.

Turnbull is Australia’s
Kevin Bacon
. If you meet Malcolm Turnbull you have an introduction to everybody else in the world worth knowing.

His wife Lucy is a former lord mayor of Sydney, his mother’s cousin’s daughter is Angela Lansbury, his uncle-in-law was late art critic
Robert Hughes
, various leftie UK politicians are his ancestors, his one-time mentor was the late
Kerry Packer
, and
Neville Wran
and
Nicholas Whitlam
are among his business partners.

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His portrait by Bill Leak was the People’s Choice winner for the 1994 Archibald Prize.

To put his social reach into context, Kevin Bacon has 199,460 Twitter followers. Malcolm Turnbull has 149,863 followers – not a bad Hollywood actor-to-Australian politician ratio.

There’s a little bit of Turnbull for everyone: his passion for a republic, his terrific art collection, his late adoption to Catholicism, his early-adopted techno-geekness, his support of league, Aussie Rules and gay marriage.

Even folk musicians like him, applauding him rapturously as he called for less spin in politics, fewer lies and lamented the lazy media in the 24-hour media cycle at last December’s Woodford folk festival.

FFS! Is no one immune to Turnbull’s charms?

There’s
Peter Costello
, for one.

It’s going on 7½ years since lowly backbencher Turnbull ruffled the feathers of the then treasurer when Turnbull had the temerity to publish his own thoughts on tax reform.

Turnbull was proud of the 50-page discussion paper he and Australian National University demographer Jeromey Temple produced to contribute to the national tax debate.

But the member for Wentworth was hurt when Costello ridiculed the paper and produced Treasury costings to rubbish its assumptions.

Note to
Joe Hockey
: Some treasurers release Treasury costings that discredit MPs from their own side – not just the opposition.

In cash-strapped 2013, Turnbull’s 2005 paper Taxation reform in Australia: some alternatives and indicative costings harks back to a golden era when surpluses reached $15 billion and tax cuts could be distributed at will come budget time.

The paper identified $10 billion a year – not even above the forward estimates! – as being the “outer limit of affordable tax cuts".

As always, the guiding principle was to broaden the base and lower the rate. Of the 280 scenarios costed by Turnbull and Temple, flattening our four-rate tax schedule to three rates of 15¢ in the dollar, 28¢ and 40¢ were identified as “possible" at a cost of $5.8 billion a year.

This type of change seems an impossible dream now, given the structural problems that are destabilising the Commonwealth budget.

Other ideas from Turnbull’s tax paper look prescient, though, as the dwindling tax take saps the government’s ability to support the electorate in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed.

Such suggestions include in-depth parliamentary investigations into the use of 200-odd tax breaks, an audit of government spending and questioning Australia’s addiction to tax churn – taking money from taxpayers as tax only to be returned in welfare benefits and tax breaks.

Voters like Turnbull because he seems to be a truth-teller, an outsider who hasn’t yet learnt how to be a politician.

But as Turnbull found out during his year as opposition leader, telling your version of the truth can get you thrashed.

You tell your colleagues a carbon trading scheme is the future. Your party dumps you. You tell the electorate Utegate is proof of a corrupt government but it turns out to be someone else’s lie. Your public dumps you.

Democracy needs truth-tellers to challenge the status quo. But it seems, not as leader.